Archive for June, 2013

Recently Shanker-Jaikishen have been acknowledged for their outstanding musical contribution to Hindi filmdom, be it the poll conducted by Bollywood 100, where they stood second after ARR but beaten up all eight yester years’ musical giants in the poll by receiving maximum number of votes. I am sure that had other new comers participated in the poll through the nomination, the whole scenario would have been in favor of Shankar-Jaikishan only. They contested a very tough fight so bravely among all oldies nominated in the poll where ARR enjoyed leverage of the younger generation who is more tech savvy and there was no contender from among the current generation of composers. This left the field almost free for ARR, else he would have been beaten up by the oldies who had better talent and contribution to film music be any measure than what he has made so far. Second poll was conducted by a news paper choosing 100 best songs of Hindi films since the inception of the industry. And not to our surprise SJ stood first with the nomination of maximum number of songs than any other composer participated in the poll. Point to be noted this poll had the criteria of number of songs. The composer with maximum number of songs nominated had to be declared as the best and here emerged Shankar-Jaikishan as the all time best composer, in terms of quality, quantity, variety, lyrics, composition, recording quality despite very limited technology support if compared with today’s technology, and so on so forth. In fact there is no aspect of film music, which this soulful musical duo has not touched during their heydays in their repertoire. Third poll was conducted by BBC Asia service. I feel this poll was the most fair and unbiased as the organizers gave equal opportunities to all composers living or dead from yester years till date. And again no surprise to any one Shankar-Jaikishan’s three songs got space in first five top songs. The first song was “Bahaaron Phool Barsao,” from Suraj sung by great Rafi Saab lyric by Hasrat Jaipuri Saab, second song was “Awara Hoon,” the title song of Awara sung by Mukesh in his soulful and poignant voice written by Shailendra, and the fourth song was “Ajeeb Daastaan Hai Yeh,” again written by Shailendra in which the nightingale Lata Mangeshkar just excels through his voice and adds something out of this world to the soulful composition. No need to say “Old is gold.” Hats off to your musical effort, which will be remembered for years to come with reverence. Amen.